


diaspora

by bombcollar



Category: Splatoon
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 05:13:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15879261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombcollar/pseuds/bombcollar
Summary: An Octoling wonders what will become of her people. Even this so-called peace has its casualties.





	diaspora

"You can always go back."

It's what Mimi tells the Octoling teenagers she finds sitting on the sidelines, watching their Inkling peers play Turf War. So many of them now finding themselves lost, the promise of the surface unfulfilled. As it turns out, a change of location was not the solution to all their problems, nor the problems of their people. 

There had been a mass exodus from the Valley, Octolings fleeing its unsustainable structures. Mimi had been here in Inkopolis for years, in disguise as an anemone, working for the battle lobby. Every day mediating their matches, breaking up fights and calling out unfair play. It was difficult, thankless work, but it allowed her access to their weaponry, confiscating illegally-modded guns and sending them off for her people to reverse-engineer. Nobody suspected a thing, but now she wondered exactly how much credit she could give herself, and how much she could give to the Inklings' inability to recognize an Octoling when they saw one.

Of course, they'd recognize, say, an Octotrooper. A waddling tentacle was a far cry from an Octoling, a creature that looked like an Inkling, could dress like an Inkling, could do everything an Inkling could. Would there be such a warm welcome for the rest of their people? Most likely not. They'd only readily accepted the Octolings because they were, in the Inklings' eyes, just a bunch of odd-looking squids. 

Mimi returns to her apartment, takes off her disguise, letting her colors shift back to their normal shades, pale pink to deep red. Octarian colors. They could change freely, take on any shade like the Inklings did, but it brought a comforting feeling of community to match the rest of her people, even so far away from them. She otherwise looks distinct from her fellow soldiers. Recon was not as active of a role, and she had little reason to wear her armor. Not that it fit anymore.

Some of the young Octolings spoke to her of a song. Strobing lights, their leader fighting the Inkling interloper who'd come to take the zapfish back. A heavenly melody. They simply couldn't explain it, but somehow it had awoken feelings inside them, an urgency to pursue something greater. Hands clasped and voices whispering as if in prayer.  _ Calamari Inkantation _ . 

She'd heard it, of course, but she'd never felt a thing.

Mimi understood why so many of them had come here. They were children leaving the only home they'd ever known as it fell apart around them. They had to adapt. But what would become of those still stuck in the Valley, now robbed of so many young, capable people who might be able to help fix what was broken? Robbed of a whole generation of their youth, who'd been forced to cast aside their own culture? Who would carry on what they were? 

Even Mimi, so deeply-embedded in the city, did everything she could for her people. She'd trained her entire life for this position, not heading up to the surface permanently until she was well into adulthood. She knew who she was, but the rest of them? What would they grow up to be? 

Not to speak of the "sanitized" Octarians. The very concept made her ill, the thought that her people were seen as dirty, unfit to be used as soldiers until they were cleansed. How this had been allowed to happen, she could never comprehend. On the surface, she sometimes felt like she missed so much happening below, but it was clear this had been going on for a very long time. With the death of their leader, quite a few had made their way up to the city as whatever destructive 'programming' had been written into them began to fail. Their memories were fragmented, if they remembered anything about themselves at all. Whenever she saw them, Mimi would go to them, swallow her disgust, tell them what she told all the others.  _ Go back. Be with your own people. They'll help you find out who you are.  _

She could remember when she first came here, not to cement herself in the population like a barnacle on the flukes of a whale, but to visit, to get a taste of where she’d be living. It had been utterly overwhelming, just walking its streets in the daylight after a life spent underground. Sure, she’d been on the surface, but that had been forays onto the arid and desolate crags surrounding the Valley, beaten by the surrounding sea. Nothing like Inkopolis with its frenetic pace, its occupants in a constant rush, as if everything were a competition, the smells, the food, the music. It had been difficult to imagine herself living here, becoming one with this, being so very alone.

When she’d left Octo Valley, left for real, she’d brought her tape player with her, a chunky plastic thing with a clear window, enabling one to watch the tape reels as they unwound. Along with it, a sample of Octavio’s music on cassettes. No matter how hopeless they grew, how exhausted they might be, hearing their DJ’s tracks brought them back, the bass thudding in rhythm with their heartbeats. It would have been easy to transfer the music to her phone, but she liked it this way, liked the  _ whirr  _ and  _ click  _ of the tape rewinding, the buttons worn smooth from so much use. You didn’t find such things up here, except perhaps as novelties.

Octarians did not have families as Inklings did. They were cloned from tentacle cuttings, generation after generation until there was nothing left but sterile replicas. That did not make them any less of a people. They still passed on their customs, their reverence of the sun, the joy of music, the art of making a life down in the darkness. In a way, they were all a family, together. Perhaps the Inklings would not understand. They obsessed over individuality, differences in opinion over pointless things, they celebrated it ritualistically. They continually fought to be the most stylish, the gaudiest, even as trends changed as swiftly as the tides rolled in and out. They had no reverence for the past, casting aside the irrelevant in pursuit of the next shiny pair of sneakers. Mimi had supervised dozens of their festivals, squids in opposite-colored shirts fighting over condiments, modes of transportation, time periods, as if they didn't fill their days with constant conflict regardless. Could an Octoling truly thrive here when their strength came from unity? Could they thrive if they forgot themselves?

Mimi sits on the edge of her bed, looking out at the city lights through the slats of her blinds. If only they'd known all along that it would be this way, that she might not have had to hide her identity in the first place. It was too late to stop pretending now. Perhaps it was too late for all of them. They were already functionally extinct and in time they might be eroded like so many broken shells on the shore. She still had to try, still had to urge as many as she could to return. This city offered many things the Valley didn't have, but it didn’t have their people, so it simply wasn't, and could never be, home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Mimi is an OC I've had for a few years now. She has an RP blog on tumblr and she's developed in some unexpected ways. It's been interesting to develop the Octarian people through her and her reactions to things, how they contrast with the Inklings. Neither people is truly good or bad, and no one individual can be blamed for what happened. She doesn't like Inklings but she can't resent them for simply being who they are according to their culture.


End file.
